Ceglia entered his plea today at a hearing before U.S.
District Judge Andrew L. Carter Jr. in Manhattan federal court.

Ceglia, 39, sued in 2010 claiming he had a contract signed
by Zuckerberg in 2003 that entitled him to a share of the
world’s biggest social network. A federal jury indicted Ceglia
on charges of mail fraud and wire fraud, alleging he faked the
contract, destroyed evidence and created phony e-mails to
support his case.

Prosecutors claim Ceglia doctored a legitimate contract
with Zuckerberg, in which the future CEO agreed to perform
coding work for Ceglia’s website, into a phony contract “in
which Zuckerberg agreed to provide Ceglia with at least a 50
percent interest in Facebook,” according to the indictment.

Each of the fraud charges carries a maximum of 20 years in
prison if Ceglia is convicted.

David Patton, the lawyer appointed to represent Ceglia,
told Carter that he plans to ask the court to move the case from
Manhattan. Ceglia lives in Wellsville, in western New York. His
civil suit against Zuckerberg and Facebook is pending in federal
court in Buffalo, New York. Patten declined to comment on the
case outside court.

Ceglia originally claimed he was due 84 percent of the
company. He later reduced the demand to half of Zuckerberg’s
Facebook holdings. Facebook, based in Menlo Park, California,
said from the start that Ceglia’s claim was fraudulent.

The criminal case is U.S. v. Ceglia, 12-mj-2842, U.S.
District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan). The
contract case is Ceglia v. Zuckerberg, 10-cv-00569, U.S.
District Court, Western District of New York (Buffalo).